They found a great deal to do that morning and Toby was late in returning to the house and was also in such a hurry to get back to his work that he quite forgot Gwendolen until the last moment.
"Tell Gwendolen that I can't come and see her yet," he said to Mark. "I'm very busy in the garden."
Mark looked rather frightened.
"Eh! Master Toby," he said, "it may put her all out of humor when I tell her that."
But Toby was not as afraid of her as other people were and he was not a self-sacrificing person.
"I can't stay," he answered. "Destiny's waiting for me;" and he ran away.
The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been. Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about. Destiny had brought a spade of her own and she had taught Toby to use all his tools, so that by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not likely to become a "gardener's garden" it would be a wilderness of growing things before the springtime was over.
"There'll be apple blossoms an' cherry blossoms overhead," Destiny said, working away with all her might. "An' there'll be peach an' plum trees in bloom against th' walls, an' th' grass'll be a carpet o' flowers."
The little fox and the rook were as happy and busy as they were, and the robin and his mate flew backward and forward like tiny streaks of lightning. Sometimes the rook flapped his black wings and soared away over the tree-tops in the park. Each time he came back and perched near Destiny and cawed several times as if he were relating his adventures, and Destiny talked to him just as she had talked to the robin. Once when Destiny was so busy that she did not answer him at first, Soot flew on to her shoulders and gently tweaked her ear with his large beak. When Toby wanted to rest a little Destiny sat down with him under a tree and once she took her pipe out of her pocket and played the soft strange little notes and two squirrels appeared on the wall and looked and listened.
"Tha's a good bit stronger than tha' was," Destiny said, looking at him as he was digging. "Tha's beginning to look different, for sure."
Toby was glowing with exercise and good spirits.
"I'm getting fatter and fatter every day," he said quite exultantly. "Mr. Medlock will have to get me some bigger suits. Mark says my hair is growing thicker. It isn't so flat and stringy."
The sun was beginning to set and sending deep gold-colored rays slanting under the trees when they parted.
"It'll be fine tomorrow," said Destiny. "I'll be at work by sunrise."
"So will I," said Toby.
He ran back to the house as quickly as his feet would carry him. He wanted to tell Gwendolen about Destiny's fox cub and the rook and about what the springtime had been doing. He felt sure she would like to hear. So it was not very pleasant when he opened the door of his room, to see Mark standing waiting for him with a doleful face.
"What is the matter?" he asked. "What did Gwendolen say when you told her I couldn't come?"
"Eh!" said Mark, "I wish tha'd gone. She was nigh goin' into one o' her tantrums. There's been a nice to do all afternoon to keep her quiet. She would watch the clock all th' time."
Toby's lips pinched themselves together. He was no more used to considering other people than Gwendolen was and he saw no reason why an ill-tempered girl should interfere with the thing he liked best. He knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and need not make other people ill and nervous, too. When he had had a headache in Antarctica he had done his best to see that everybody else also had a headache or something quite as bad. And he felt he was quite right; but of course now he felt that Gwendolen was quite wrong.
